L.A. Rex

It would be easy to believe that the world Will Beall depicts in L.A. REX is merely paranoid fiction, except that Beall is a Los Angeles police officer who knows what he's talking about. Narrator Dan Oreskes is Beall's equal in bringing words to life in brutal black-and-white. There is nothing colorful in this world, not even the blood that spills so easily. Beall takes us not so gently into the horrific world of South Central LA, where gangs are king and life is cheap. His style is raw, and he uses street talk that he never explains. (Figure it out for yourself.) Oreskes will make your skin crawl. His voice is hard, matching the novel's gunmetal tone. M.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

July 10, 2006
Beall's hard-edged debut explores the familiar territory of drugs and corruption on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles. In scenes that alternate between the past and the present, rookie police officer Ben Halloran, who's partnered with tough veteran Miguel Marquez, struggles to conceal his secret affiliation with a ganglord, even as the pair probe a series of murders. Beall, himself an officer in the LAPD's 77th Division, writes what he knows, but loads of pointless, gory violence (including gougings and mutilations), some awkward prose ("The party was Carcosa's schizophrenic attempt to reconcile his criminal origins with the propriety of a Mexican tradition"), improbable plot elements (thugs who quote Macbeth
) and a lack of redeeming characters limit this one's appeal. Author tour.